Within the framework of the development of antennas associated with mass-market products and used in domestic wireless networks, antennas consisting of a dielectric resonator have been identified as an interesting solution. Specifically, antennas of this type exhibit good properties in terms of passband and radiation. Moreover, they readily take the form of discrete components that can be surface mounted. Components of this type are known by the term SMC components. SMC components are of interest, in the field of wireless communications for the mass market, since they allow the use of low-cost substrates, thereby leading to a reduction in costs while ensuring equipment integration. Moreover, when RF frequency functions are developed in the form of SMC components, good performance is obtained despite the low quality of the substrate and integration is often favoured thereby.
Moreover, new requirements in terms of throughput are leading to the use of high throughput multimedia networks such as the Hyperlan2 and IEEE 802.11A networks. In this case, the antenna must be able to ensure operation over a wide frequency band. Now, dielectric resonator type antennas or DRAs consist of a dielectric patch of any shape, characterized by its relative permittivity. The passband is directly related to the dielectric constant which therefore conditions the size of the resonator. Thus, the lower the permittivity, the more wideband the DRA antenna, but in this case, the component is bulky. However, in the case of use in wireless communication networks, the compactness constraints demand a reduction in the size of dielectric resonator antennas, possibly leading to incompatibility with the bandwidths required for such applications.